Strong forces were shattering the glass walls as I came downstairs from my work floor. A bunch of people were just staring at the dark sky and the heavy downpour with their unopened umbrellas. I think they were deciding whether or not to take the risk of walking in that kind of a rain. It was a strange one for sure. The sky had turned pitch dark at 5 in the evening and it started pouring heavily by 5:30. I’m quite bad with opening umbrellas while I’m taking care of the doors. I don’t know what to do first and what to do next or most importantly, how to do both the things together? Most of the times, I open the door first and then try to open the umbrella and by that time, I’m a little wet already. That’s what happened yesterday too.
I saw the giant Black cars with red eyes making their way towards nowhere. I was happy that I didn’t have to be careful about the water splashing from the car tires today. It’s quite dark first of all and my legs are wet already, so I don’t have to worry. The rain was falling at an angle of 30 degrees and no matter how much hard I tried to balance the umbrella and move it around, the rain water would brush my feet. I was enjoying the forces. I was enjoying that my brain reacting so fast for a change and dripping with emotions.
Nature definitely is much more powerful than humans. If the winds were a bit more stronger, they would have flew me away. I enjoyed walking on the footpaths. Footpaths which are generally full of people, some people walking so slow to annoy the hell out of me seemed empty today. The cars gave me company. The ones with red eyes. I wonder what people inside them felt. Perhaps happy of their accomplishments in life. Perhaps pitying the fate of people like us walking on the footpath. I remembered my teenage driver days. Driving a car felt a lot of liberation and independence. I felt that I could move places faster than my own speed and can even take people around. Perhaps the ones inside the cars just felt happy that they were protected and were aiming to reach their destinations soon. I hope they did.
The yellow lines for the blind, the white lines and the blue lines on the footpaths looked more brighter and clearer than ever before. I have always wondered how did that colour yellow helped the blind anyway. That doesn’t seem to be addressing the basic fact that they cannot see. While I was trying to walk straight on a dark stormy night, I thought of Vivekananda. His beautiful poems and quotes have always inspired me. He did go to Kanyakumari. I guess the depth of the oceans made his thinking clearer and easier. Maybe he heard nature’s voices and penned them down. An average person could not have written such facts.
As I walked forward I came to the signal and there was still a minute for me to cross the road. While I waited for the signal to turn green, I looked at the tall buildings of Guangzhou. I wondered what people must be doing in them at the moment. It was dinner time, so most of them must be having dinner while some would be playing or sleeping or trying to write or sketch. That noon I had seen a family next to my lunch table. While the elders of the family were busy deciding what to order, the little girl was painting on her notebook. She wasn’t bothered about the food, she wasn’t affected by the senseless talks that elders indulge in. She carried her good work on her Sketchbook till the food arrived. Her mom served a few things on the plate and that’s when she showed her sketch to them. I tried to take a sneak-peek of the sketch too. She had drawn a fairy and had worked extensively hard on the gown the fairy was wearing. I think the painting looked quite beautiful. I don’t have too artistic eyes but I hope an artist would have loved it too.
I crossed the signal and started walking towards the last stretch of the road to reach my apartment building. The forces of nature became even more severe and people under the shops were looking at me strangely as if it was wrong walking in the rain. I thought of India and how it had an open drainage system in many places, how they would get jammed in such heavy rains and how water would enter homes sometimes. There was no such problem here. Water seemed to be flowing smoothly, entering through some passageways somewhere and there was no clogging. I didn’t have to watch my steps carefully here because there were no open drains and I would not step my foot on one such like I would worry there.
As I entered my apartment building, the security officer opened the gate for me before I took out my keys and entry card. As I took the lift and entered home, I knew I wouldn’t find my mom standing at the gate to touch my forehead and check if I had fever. Nor would someone comfortingly say ‘The food is ready and I have made your favorite rice, let me quickly warm it up while you change your dress’. I checked my trousers, they were wet till the knee. I tip toed into my tiny apartment thinking ‘It is Mother’s Day this Sunday’. There was a pin-drop silence.
